Mass-Observation – Munitions of the Mind

“The rockets, dearie? Can’t say I’ve ever noticed them” – Londoners respond to the V-2

“The rockets, dearie? Can’t say I’ve ever noticed them” – Londoners respond to the V-2

Published November 23, 2022

By Charlie Hall

Asking a historian to choose their favourite primary source is a cruel assignment indeed. Any piece of historical scholarship we embark on necessarily involves engagement with a great volume of primary material, especially those of us who work on the abundantly well-documented modern period. With whichever primary sources we look at, we hope that we will gain an insight into the past – not just how events unfolded, or why, but also how contemporaries reacted to these developments. This enables us to humanise historical actors and witnesses and to draw out their stories in a way that has resonance for modern readers.

Misinformation, Mass Observation and the Public Perception of the Norway Campaign, 1940

Published February 23, 2022

Written by Charles Taylor

If you ask the modern-day Briton about the Norway campaign of 1940, you will likely be met with a blank face or a simple shrug. Eclipsed by the evacuation of Dunkirk and the fall of France, Britain’s involvement in this theatre has undoubtedly drifted into the background of British memory of the Second World War. Though little known, the campaign holds many significances for the armed forces. Erupting on 9 April 1940 with Germany’s Operation Weserübung, Norway was the first land campaign of the Second World War for Britain, the earliest meeting of British and German troops on the battlefield, the first joint Allied land operation, and the first modern sea, land and air campaign. Despite these considerations, Britain’s military involvement remains all but forgotten, condemned as a humiliating background episode and often glazed over in the history books.

Britain’s War: A New World, 1942–1947

Published May 12, 2021

Reviewed by Chris Smith

This book, the second volume of Daniel Todman’s mammoth history of Britain’s Second World War, picks up where the previous volume left off in 1941. Unlike the majority of histories of Britain’s conflict, which tend to focus on only one aspect of the war, Todman’s work aims to be completist – or rather as completist as any single history (even in two volumes) of Britain and the Second World War can hope to be.

Tag: Mass-Observation

“The rockets, dearie? Can’t say I’ve ever noticed them” – Londoners respond to the V-2

Misinformation, Mass Observation and the Public Perception of the Norway Campaign, 1940

Britain’s War: A New World, 1942–1947